


A Portion of Thyself

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Young Anders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders hated a lot of things about the Tower, but one of the ones that seemed the most utterly pointless to him was the way they weren’t allowed to observe their own birthdays, not really.  They did, of course, but it had to be quick, surreptitious—they weren’t allowed to gather in groups for parties, and what sort of thing would they have given each other for presents, anyway?  None of them had much, and most of what they did have was standard issue, the few personal possessions they’d managed to gather or hang onto far too precious to give away as gifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Portion of Thyself

In the Anderfels, it was the custom for children to be presented at the closest chantry on their birthdays. A Sister would take the child’s hand and lead a short prayer, asking for the Maker’s blessing in the coming year, and then ask the child to reflect seriously on how the Maker might wish for his or her improvement. It was serious and religious and generally mindlessly, mind-numbingly dull, but after that, the Sister would give the child a silver coin, and the child’s parents would use that coin to pay for gifts of something or other, a new tunic, favorite foods, or a little painted wooden horse, and the child would be generally made much of for the rest of the day, which tended to make it _feel_ worth it, if nothing else.

The last time, Anders had said he would try to pay more attention to his father’s sheep when he was guarding them, rather than letting his mind wander into flights of fancy, great adventures and distant lands and heroic escapades, and letting the sheep wander off with it.

He hadn’t managed to start minding them properly before the templars came for him. He’d tried his best, but to a twelve-year-old boy, sheep simply weren’t as interesting as the sailing ships and far-off lands in his imagination. And then there had been the magic, the fire in the barn, and his father hadn’t wanted him near the sheep after that, as if he’d curse them with a touch or a look, had locked him in the cellar until the templars came.

He was a man, now—if only he could manage to make Karl Thekla _see_ that he was a man, but however often he tossed his hair or looked at him under his eyelashes Karl seemed determined to remain blind to the fact that Anders was grown up already. Or, well, all right, he was seventeen that year, but there was stubble on his chin, however fuzzy, and he’d grown out of most of the loose-limbed awkward clumsiness of youth, no longer running himself into walls or tripping over his own feet. He was almost graceful, now, he thought, and at least his freckles were gone. When he batted his eyelashes and grinned at the girls in the corridors, they laughed and blushed and hid their faces shyly (boys tended to just turn slow, bright red). It had worked on girls outside the Tower, too. He wanted to make Karl blush like that. (If not Karl, then Solona Amell, but it was Karl’s warm eyes and quiet smile, the beard that was starting to obscure the curve of his jaw, that filled most of his daydreams that didn’t feature templars falling before his power or the wind outside the tower in his hair.)

Last year, on his birthday, he’d been out of the Circle, trying to escape. He’d gotten pretty far that time, too. He was still proud of that, just a little. On his birthday he’d used the last few copper coins he’d managed to swipe to buy a meat pie and an earring, because it was stylish and fancy and made him feel sophisticated and _unique_. He’d lain on his back in the grass, smelling the damp, growing freshness of the grass and dirt, and watched the clouds move across the sky and felt the sun on his face, the wind tousling his hair just like it did in his daydreams.

The templars had given him thirty lashes on his bare back when they caught him, but it had been a good birthday, even if they had caught him three days later.

Anders hated a lot of things about the Tower, but one of the ones that seemed the most utterly _pointless_ to him was the way they weren’t allowed to observe their own birthdays, not really. They did, of course, but it had to be quick, surreptitious—they weren’t allowed to gather in groups for parties, and what sort of thing would they have given each other for presents, anyway? None of them had much, and most of what they did have was standard issue, the few personal possessions they’d managed to gather or hang onto far too precious to give away as gifts. People were allowed to send them things, of course—bloody Flora (Anders refused to call him Finn) got some new knitted monstrosity from his parents every year, but Anders had no one to send him anything; no one who would care to. When he was fourteen, he’d started a party, anyway, and when the templars came to break it up, he’d gotten right up in their flaming eyeslits, demanding to know what was so bad about a little fun.

Irving hadn’t found that incident very amusing—he’d lectured him for ages, after—and the old fart had made certain Anders was assigned to cleaning duty in the library on his next birthday. Karl had shown up, though, halfway through, and passed him notes in the margins of the books he was studying from, making the silence of the library and the interminable task of dusting the shelves bearable, though it wasn’t exactly throwing wadded up essays at Solona and Jowan and Neria while Karl pretended he was far too mature to be moving them around with his force magic whilst totally doing so like they’d done the year before. Anders had asked Karl, afterwards, all calculated nonchalance and charm—or that was what he’d been trying for, anyway, he still wasn’t quite certain he’d pulled it off, but he was much better at that now, at any rate, he’d been practicing—what he remembered resolving to work on his last birthday in the Anderfels.

Karl had said, in a low voice, after a long moment staring down at his feet when Anders had begun to regret ever asking and started trying to figure out how to get out of the whole situation with a joke that would make it all right again, that he thought it had been learning how to put on his own tunics and breeches properly like his older brother, but he’d been so young, he couldn’t be quite certain whether or not it was something he really remembered or something he’d made up.

Anders hadn’t known what to say over the lump in his throat. He’d made a joke about how he’d resolved to stop daydreaming about tigers and exotic Tevinter maidens with fiery dark eyes, and Karl had observed, dryly, that he still didn’t seem to have managed that, if the doodles in his books were any indication. Anders had informed him that he was creating great art.

Karl hadn’t seemed convinced, for some reason.

That had been right before he’d been Harrowed. He was years too young and they all knew it—they’d just been looking for an excuse to kill him, he was sure of it. But he still couldn’t think about that without starting to shake. That was why he’d run that last time, because at least now they couldn’t make him Tranquil, and maybe he could get to Denerim and find his phylactery and—

Well, that hadn’t happened. But Anders had brought Karl something back—it hadn’t been a very good present, just a clear stone he’d found in a stream, when the templars had stopped to let him wash his face and get a few quick gulps of water, the rough edges run away by the current—but it was something pretty, with a sparkle of gold specks along a vein in it, something from _outside_ , and since they were dragging him back anyway, Karl deserved something better than faded memories, old and dusty and gray like the Anderfels plains, for his next birthday, Anders had thought. He wished he could have gotten him something better, something bright, real, from the homeland Karl barely remembered, like the colorful stitches of the embroidery Anders’ mother had used to do, like on the pillow he still had—on a shirt, maybe, or a small cloth bag; he’d seen some of them in the Redcliffe market. But a river stone had had to do. At least it was clear, something light in the constant, shadowed gloom of the tower corridors that made him feel he was caught in a perpetual twilight.

Karl had used it to mark his pages ever since, and that, if nothing else, made Anders feel warm inside, not … stupid risky warm, but—

All right, maybe a little stupid, risky warm, he was bad at not taking stupid risks, but no one would ever know, anyway, because he didn’t intend to tell them. Not even Karl.

He wasn’t expecting anything for his birthday this year, since he was still technically in trouble for getting caught climbing up the bookcases in the library to get to the windows three days ago. Maybe he should have saved that little escapade for his birthday, he thought—then he could at least have had the sunlight on his face, like a gift to himself. But he’d been restless, the _need_ to at least have that much sun, that much air, that much _freedom_ , crawling under his skin like a living thing, hot and clawing and desperate, tight inside his chest, curling in around his heart. He hadn’t thought, much, he’d simply needed to move, to get _out_ , to do _something_. So of course they’d caught him while he was climbing down from the window where he usually curled himself into the ledge and watched the birds wheel by over the lake. He was confined to quarters, except for class, so he was lying on his back on his bed, glaring at the lines in his hand, which he was holding right over his eyes to study in detail, and trying to imagine it into a map, a map he’d follow the next time he escaped, as he enumerated in detail in his head what he’d be doing if he were out of the Tower today, to celebrate, where he’d follow that map to (most of it involved drinking. A lot of drinking. And a pretty girl in his lap, who wasn’t Karl, but who was still willing to flirt with him, and kiss him, and put her arms around him. That would be nice. Nicer if it were Karl, but whenever he asked Karl if he’d ever thought about escaping, Karl sighed and shook his head and told him that _someone_ had to be cautious enough for both of them). He was supposed to be studying entropy magic, catching up with the other full mages, almost all of whom were at least two years older than he was—it was his weakest school other than force magic, but it was supposed to be, anyway, it was the opposite of healing, it was normal that he was bad at his natural opposite, and it wasn’t like studying was going to help with that much.

So he was shocked when Karl came in and told him to sit up, Anders, he had a surprise for him.

Anders looked at him dubiously. “Like … the templars decided they’d rather cane me again, as a gift for my birthday?” he said. “Or wait, no—let me guess, Irving decided on three more days being confined to quarters for being a smart-mouthed little, what did he call me again? Oh, right, little scamp.”

Karl looked pained, that furrow between his eyes deepening, drawing ever more tightly together. “Don’t joke about that sort of thing,” he said. “It’s not funny.”

Anders shrugged. Laughing was better than anything else he could be doing about it, other than anger, and anger was pointless, anger just made his fists clench and his chest seize up with aching heat and it didn’t _get_ him anywhere, just kept building and building until it hurt, and he had to run or hurt someone. And he didn’t like hurting people—not that he’d get away with it, even if he’d tried it for a change, but he really didn’t want to; the thought of it usually made him feel vaguely sick.

“Well, it’s not either of those things,” Karl said firmly. “You’re free to leave your quarters two days early, in fact.”

Anders sat up in bed at that. “Wow,” he said, a little wonderingly, impressed. His chest felt tight, a warm, heavy sense of gratitude welling up inside him. “Whose prick did you have to suck to manage that?”

Karl gave him the firm, steady look that wasn’t a glare, but wasn’t not a glare, either. “I tried a logical argument instead,” he said instead, with some asperity that made him sound much older than the few years he had on Anders, more like a senior enchanter already. “It worked wonders.”

Anders grinned at him. “Oh, you’re no fun,” he said.

“I’m more fun than you seem to think,” Karl said, fighting the smile that tugged at his lips, disappearing into the gray-brown strands of his beard, “and if you come with me, you’ll see what I mean.”

Of course, Anders _had_ to go with him after a challenge like that one. He toyed with the idea, delicious and thrillingly unlikely, that Karl actually hadn’t gotten permission for him to leave his quarters early at all, that this was a daring, forbidden act of rebellion—but most of him knew Karl too well for that, and the fact that Karl always went through proper channels and did things, well, properly, usually by the letter of the stupid Blighted rules, didn’t diminish the gesture one bit. (It would just be more _exciting_ if Karl were breaking the rules on his behalf, and almost, a little bit, not quite, but almost, romantic? But no, that was stupid, what they had wasn’t a relationship, wouldn’t be even if Karl did ever notice what Anders was trying to make him see with his smiles and touches and eyelash flutters. It couldn’t ever be anything termed romantic, not in this prison; it was too dangerous. A smart mage would never dare.)

Karl took him up a floor, much to Anders’ surprise, and let them into a senior enchanter’s room. Anders looked around suspiciously. “All right,” he said, “I’ll bite. What’s the trick?”

“No trick,” Karl said, “I simply—”

But then a mewing sound came from the corner of the room as an ugly ginger tom straightened up from a nap and stretched, and Karl was nearly forgotten as Anders crossed the room to kneel in front of and coo at the cat who was very nearly his favorite denizen of the tower, sinking his fingers into thick ginger fur, scratching behind ears and rubbing at a scruffy chin. “Who’s an adorable kitty, Mr. Wiggums,” he asked the cat, who butted his head up under Anders’ palm as if asking for more strokes. Anders was all too happy to oblige. “That’s right; same answer as always—you are!” He picked up the tomcat and settled onto the bed as Mr. Wiggums dug his claws into his robes.

It was some time before Karl clearing his throat brought his attention back to the older mage. “It was so clever of you to find where he’s been hiding,” Anders said admiringly. He missed the cat when he ran away, or when he was being punished for something. He’d missed Karl, too. They were some of the only things that made life in the Tower bearable—but he couldn’t let his missing them keep him here. Couldn’t let it hurt enough to keep him from leaving them behind.

Because he _was_ going to leave them behind. He was. Someday he’d get away for good, and he’d never come back.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t like them, or think about them, while he was gone. He scratched behind Mr. Wiggums’ ear and gave Karl his most charming smile as thanks.

“That isn’t …” Karl stopped, and seemed to consider. He seemed almost a little … flustered? Off-balance? Which was strange. It was hard to throw Karl off-balance; Anders should know—he spent an inordinate amount of time trying to think of ways to make the older mage blush. “That was just luck,” he said after a moment. “I happened to find him earlier today. Your birthday present is something else.”

Anders beamed at him. “You remembered it’s my birthday,” he said, and winked. “I think that deserves a reward,” he added, dropping his voice into a husky, seductive register.

“Of course I remembered it was your birthday,” Karl said, and gave him another look. This one was the one Anders privately thought of as _stop-that-Anders_.

He didn’t stop. “Well, what is it, then?” he said. “Mr. Wiggums and I are waiting with bated breath. Right, kitty? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Karl shook his head at him. “I have this room for the whole day,” he said. “And we can lock the door, if we want. No templars to bother us—and no classes, either. So … if you’d prefer, I can leave you alone, but I thought you’d … probably want some company.”

Anders stared at him, utterly forgetting to try and be charming. “You—” he stopped. “How?”

Karl shrugged. “I helped one of the senior enchanters with a force magic experiment,” he said, “and she talked to the templars for me. It actually wasn’t a great deal of trouble.”

Anders felt himself flush hot. “And you … used that to give me a gift?” he said, too shocked to be anything other than graceless. “Karl, _why_? You could have gotten anything out of being owed a favor like that. Anything, even … a trip to Denerim, or—” He didn’t bring up the fact that being allowed out of the Tower was a privilege Anders would undoubtedly never earn, not after all the trouble he’d caused. It wasn’t like Anders cared. He wasn’t going to play by their stupid rules—he’d escape himself, eventually, and that would be that.

“I wanted to,” Karl said simply. He crossed the room, locking the door behind him, and sat down on the bed beside Anders, not touching, but close by. “It’s not a real escape, I know,” he said. “It’s not real freedom. But maybe it’s close enough, for a while.” He sighed, shook his head. “It’s the best I could do.”

“Karl, it’s—” Anders had to swallow. He picked up Mr. Wiggums, set him aside on the bed, and then flung himself at Karl, throwing his arms around his shoulders and kissing him full on the mouth.

“Mmph!” Karl said, and almost fell back onto the bed, barely catching himself with one hand. Anders curled his fingers in Karl’s beard and pressed himself closer, slid his tongue hot and eager between Karl’s lips. He was _good_ at kissing, he knew he was—at least, he’d never had any complaints, and—

Karl grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him back. “Anders,” he gasped, and his cheeks were red; he was breathing heavily, Anders noticed with some satisfaction, “what are you do—”

“Kissing you,” Anders told him. “I should think that would be _obvious_.” He leaned forward to touch their lips together, damp and warm, to start over again. Mr. Wiggums made an annoyed, put-upon noise and jumped off the bed.

“But—” Karl got his hand around the back of Anders’ head, his fingers tangling in his hair, and pulled him back. “But why?”

“Oh, come on,” Anders said with a laugh. “I didn’t think I was being exactly subtle. The sidelong glances in the hallways didn’t give me away? What about the way I find an excuse to touch you whenever we study together?”

“Anders, you shouldn’t let this infatuation—” Karl started.

Anders frowned at him. “Shouldn’t I?” he demanded. “Why not? I _want_ to kiss you. Because … because you care enough to give me a birthday present.” He had to take a deep breath and blink quickly. He climbed into Karl’s lap, straddled his hips, draped both arms over his shoulders, and leaned forward again. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “Kiss me. I want to _thank_ you.” His hands felt damp, sweaty—it hit him, all of a sudden, what he was doing, and his stomach suddenly twisted up with knots, because this was Karl, and he’d wanted this, him, for so long. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, say that this was because Karl was someone _he_ cared about—his best friend, and maybe even more than that, because that was too dangerous, that was too much, that was asking for it to hurt. But maybe, just maybe, it was true.

Karl looked at him a moment longer, and he raised his hands to stroke gently back through Anders’ hair. “I didn’t do this to get you into bed,” he said finally, after a long moment while Anders tried not to be afraid he was about to be rejected. And mostly failed, but Karl didn’t have to know that, either.

“I know,” Anders said. “That’s not really your style, is it?” Besides, if Karl wanted to bed him, he could have done it before now. Anders hadn’t, ever, been with anyone, that was, not for more than uncertain kisses, not that he spread that around, but he hadn’t exactly been making a secret of his interest in Karl lately.

“I just wanted to give you some time to yourself,” Karl said. “Without any templars' eyes on you. To do whatever you wanted. Deface textbooks, maybe. Talk about whatever you’d like, dance the Remigold; I don’t care.”

“Karl,” Anders said, leaning forward again, so that his breath ghosted over Karl’s cheek, above the beard, nuzzling his lips against his cheek. “I _know_.” He brushed their lips together again, tentatively. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to thank you for.”

“Good,” Karl said. “Well, then, in that case … .” And he braced his hands on Anders’ jaw, his fingers warm over his cheeks, and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips. His hands were firm but gentle, he traced the fuzzy line of his jaw with his fingers, rubbed his thumb over the earring, and his mouth was warm and steady and strong. Anders leaned into it, helpless, breathless, wrapped his arms tight around Karl’s shoulders as Karl’s own arms went around his waist.

It wasn’t freedom, but it was warmth, and caring. It was something he’d _wanted_ , and Karl’s hand on his back, in his hair, his lips and breath hot and wet and real against his, well, it _wasn’t_ freedom, but it was a good birthday present all the same.


End file.
